Marine Le Pen

Marine Le Pen (5 August 1968-) was the leader of the Front National of France, a right-wing party that was anti-globalism, anti-immigration, and nativist. In 2017, she ran for President of France.

Biography
Marine Le Pen was born Marion Anne Perrine Le Pen in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France on 5 August 1968. Her father Jean-Marie Le Pen was from a family of Bretons, and he was a former paratrooper and politician. In 1991 she graduated from Pantheon-Assas University, specializing in criminal law and becoming a lawyer in 1992. In 1998 she was elected as a regional councillor in Nord-Pas-de-Calais, and she became a politician in her father's party, the Front National (FN). She made controversial statements such as likening Nazi Germany's occupation of France during World War II with Muslims praying in public, saying that both were examples of occupation, with Muslims occupying space and saying, "it weighs heavily on local residents." On 16 January 2011 she succeeded her father as FN's leader, and she was a nativist that was opposed to Muslims and immigration. Support for her rose after the attacks on Paris by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Islamic State in January and November 2015, respectively, but in the elections on 13 December 2015 the National Front did not gain a single region of the country.